


Only a Signal Shown

by sowell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:31:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean chases Sam to the Everglades. S7-ish AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only a Signal Shown

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Title taken from "The Theologian's Tale" by Longfellow 2) Some liberties taken with the monster described 3) This is basically a love letter to Dean. Because, you know, I love him.

Sam and alcohol were a terrible mix. Dean could drink until he was emptied out and never give himself away with a stagger. Sam’s whole body took on a loose-limbed clumsiness when he drank. His eyes got too bright, his hair got wrecked from the constant motion of his hands, and he always looked at Dean like everything else  _hurt_. Like Dean was the one thing keeping him from crashing.  
  
He put his hands on Dean sometimes, patting at him with an uncomfortable reverence, and Dean had learned a long time ago to throw him off, immediately and without question. Mocking was necessary, if Sam wasn’t already weepy. Sam’s hands, long-fingered and strong, made Dean shiver in a way that no woman and no drug and no magic could ever replicate.  
  
In his own bed, tense as gunfire and miles away from sleeping, Dean heard Sam whimper, and he knew he’d have to wake him. He knew he couldn’t let Sam scream himself awake, because it made Dean want to scream right along with him. It was just a shoulder shake, hard and perfunctory, except Sam reached out blindly in his waking panic, grabbing at Dean’s own shoulder, and Dean didn’t pull away fast enough.  
  
Sam’s face crumpled in the aftermath of the nightmare, and Dean reached for him. He blamed that hand on his shoulder, because Sam’s grip was painfully hard through Dean’s t-shirt, and it made Dean a little light-headed.  
  
“Hey,” Dean said. “You’re okay. Snap out of it.”  
  
Sam shuddered with his whole body, arching backwards and dragging Dean with him, hand kneading.  
  
“It’s fine,” Dean said. “Just a nightmare.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam said shakily. He’d been drinking, and Dean should have expected the touching, but he was too worried about Sam, and Sam’s terror, and what Sam needed from him. Sam’s other hand moved to his waist, sliding up his ribcage and curling into his side.  
  
He should have just walked away, but he hadn’t been paying proper attention, and then Sam’s grip was tightening and pulling him down. Dean went, already half gone with relief and the prickly cocoon of their darkened room.  
  
Sam was sniffling a little, and that was what Dean was focusing on instead of Sam’s eyes and the way they latched on to his mouth. Sam’s lips went for his, desperate and fast.  
  
In retrospect, it had always been coming, but Dean was blindsided just the same.  
  
Dean woke up to Sam staring at him, ashen-faced and shrinking back against the wall, as far from Dean as he could get. The bed was wrecked, and it smelled like both of them – Sam’s cheap laundry and Dean’s saliva and the salt and gunsmoke that clung to them, always.  
  
Sam threw up between them before Dean had a chance to say a word.  
  
Afterward, they watched each other without looking, eyes drifting to anything that wasn’t a familiar face.  
  
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Sam said, throat working.  
  
“I could have stopped it,” Dean answered. He felt like he was coming apart inside, because putting his own hands on Sam wasn’t a line he ever thought he’d cross. It was the one thing he’d always been able to say he’d done right, and he’d just smashed it to bits.  
  
“So what now?” Sam asked, and he sounded lost.  
  
“Now nothing,” Dean said. “We do what we always do. We keep hunting and just…just forget this ever happened.”

  
*****

They lasted two months before Sam got blind drunk again. They’d stopped speaking when they weren’t actively fighting, stopped looking at each other, really, and so Dean blamed it on the tension when they ended up against the wall of their hotel room, dry humping and mouthing at bare skin like teenagers.  
  
“I can’t,” Sam said in the morning. “I can’t do this anymore. Please, Dean.”  
  
It was like glass breaking, lodging in his chest without the release of blood or death. Dean closed his eyes. “What do you want to do?”  
  
“I think we need to split up,” Sam said. “Because we can’t do this and I can’t…” He stopped, bit his lip.  
  
It hurt so goddamn  _much_ , but Dean said, “Okay.” And then, “I think you’re right.”

  
*****

They hunted apart. Dean hunted alone, mostly, although every once in a while Bobby would pair him up with another hunter if the sonofabitch in question was particularly nasty.  
  
He knew Sam kept in touch with Bobby, too, but they managed to never meet there at the same time. Bobby was good like that.  
  
“Heard from your brother?” Bobby would ask when Dean called to check in. It was for Dean’s sake, really, because that was Dean’s cue to say ‘no’ and Bobby’s cue to tell him that Sam was still alive, that he was doing just fine.  
  
Dean wasn’t doing fine, but Dean hadn’t been doing fine for a long time. Since his father dropped dead on a hospital floor, actually. John had never laid a hand on either of them unless they were training, but Dean thought he might have gotten a beating for this.  _Take care of your brother_  did not include  _fuck your brother and then drive him away_.  
  
Sometimes he got news of Sam’s kills. The hunter network was underground, but chatty enough if you knew where to look. Ellen had clued him in to rest stops all over the country that were hunter-friendly, and once he heard three hunters talking about a wendigo Sam had taken out in Minnesota.  
  
“Sam Winchester,” one of them said. “Always thought he was just his brother’s pet. Guess not.”  
  
Dean didn’t know whether to be proud or whether to kick the guy’s ass. It was confusing enough that he was still internally debating when the three of them finished their coffees and left.  
  
Three years went by, and the Sam-shaped hole in Dean started to close a little bit. Still gaping, still painful, but familiar and less jagged. And then the call from Bobby came.

  
*****

Bobby called in the middle of the night, which was never a good sign, and his voice was wrong. He had something he didn’t want to tell Dean, and there was only one thing that would make Bobby hesitate.  
  
“Sam,” Dean said, sitting up. “Is it Sam?” His heart was slamming in triple time, and he thought he might have been bracing himself for this since the day Sam walked away.  
  
“He’s…I don’t know,” Bobby said. “I haven’t heard from him in over a week. Isn’t like him.”  
  
“Where is he?”  
  
“I sent him on a hunt down in Florida. People disappearing from a little development. Last I heard he was thinking tulpa, but I never got confirmation. I sent some contacts down there to look, but…nothing.”  
  
“Tell me exactly where,” Dean said.

  
*****

He followed Sam’s trail for three days and wound up renting a flat-bottomed boat to carry him through the humid tangle of the Everglades. One local family had seen Sam rent a boat himself, and then never seen him again. It would be just like Sam to chase some creature out here and then end up getting eaten by an alligator.  
  
He found it just as night was falling. There was a rental overturned on the marshy shore, with a logo that matched the one Dean had rented. By the slime and sawgrass climbing all over the white siding, Dean guessed it had been there at least two days. He dragged his boat up on shore as best he could, then set off on foot.  
  
He was moving mainly on instinct. Any trail Sam had left would have been gone within hours, taken by the tides and the shifting vegetation. But he knew Sam wasn’t dead with the same certainty he knew his own face in the mirror, and he knew which way Sam would have traveled. Dean was the one who taught him to track.  
  
He smelled the trailer before he saw it. There were flies sticking to the windows, and the stench of mud and old trash was overpowering. It was sunk in the soggy ground, rounded and rusty silver. Cans and empty cigarette cartons made a moat around the perimeter, and all the windows were crusted in grime.  
  
He went in with his gun drawn. The light was getting murky, and the smell made his eyes water, but he spotted Sam right away, slumped against the far corner. Sam was pale, his face more lined than Dean remembered, and his head flopped forward when Dean tried to check for a pulse.  
  
There was something dark and splotchy staining the front of his shirt, but Dean wasn’t going to examine that now.  
  
“Sam,” Dean said, heart skittering. “Sam, wake up. It’s me, it’s me.”  
  
Sam groaned and pushed at his hands, turning his head away like Dean’s voice hurt. “Stop it,” he moaned. “Enough. Just kill me if you’re gonna kill me.”  
  
“Hey!” Dean shook him, trying to pull his attention back, and Sam finally rolled his face around to look at him. Dean jerked back at the gleaming hatred he saw there.  
  
“Dean?” Sam rasped, and the terrible expression cleared from his eyes.  
  
“Yeah, Sammy,” Dean breathed. Sam was alive, and so Dean put a hand on his stomach. It was cool but wet, soaking through Sam’s shirt. Blood.  
  
“You came,” Sam said. “You came for me.” He sounded so relieved, so fucking happy to see Dean, and if Dean had known he would have come months ago. Years ago. He never would have left.  
  
“Don’t I always?” he said, sliding a hand behind Sam’s shoulder to help him stand up.  
  
Sam hissed, and his legs slid out from under him. “I can’t,” he said, sounding apologetic. “Dean…”  
  
Dean lifted his shirt and bit down hard on his tongue. Sam’s stomach was slashed wide open, hip to hip, deep enough that Dean could see into him, if he tried.  
  
“I can’t move,” Sam said, and Dean realized his words were a little slurred. “He’s been gone for a few hours. He’ll be back. I tried to get out, but…”  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“Crocotta,” Sam said with a tired little smile. “It had your voice. I got careless.”  
  
Dean shucked his own shirt, folding it into a thick bandage. “You hold that on your stomach,” he ordered. “I don’t care if I have to carry you. We’re getting out of here.”  
  
Sam was dead weight, and Dean’s shirt fell right out of his limp fingers. Dean swore and jammed it back against Sam’s stomach himself, holding it there while he dragged Sam a few painful steps forward. Sam’s eyes were unfocused, and Dean knew he was close to passing out from blood loss.  
  
“You should leave me. I’m probably dead anyway,” Sam said, that remorse in his voice again, and Dean bared his teeth.  
  
“You should shut your pie hole,” he said. “Let’s go.”  
  
They moved forward, one step at a time, one of Dean’s arms holding Sam up, the other pressing the makeshift bandage against him. Every once in a while, Sam’s sweaty head would drop against Dean’s neck, and Dean knew how hard he was fighting to stay conscious.  
  
“Why are you even heavier?” Dean panted, putting one foot in front of the other. “All you eat are fruits and vegetables.”  
  
Sam laughed in a muted way, just a shake of his shoulders and a puff of air against Dean’s neck.  
  
“I mean it,” Dean said. “I bet you haven’t had a burger in three years.” It was a stupid, inane thing to talk about, but if it kept Sam stumbling forward then it would do.  
  
“You…should be…fat…by now,” Sam said with effort. “So…gross.”  
  
“I’m too pretty to get fat,” Dean said, and it was maybe not the best choice of words. Dean thought he remembered Sam calling him something like that three years ago – pretty, gorgeous, beautiful – some drunken bullshit. It all came crashing back – the feel of Sam’s sweat-damp skin, the painful press of his mouth, and the wide, wide look in his eyes.  
  
“Shouldn’t…have left,” Sam mumbled, and Dean didn’t know if he was talking to Dean or talking to himself, but it didn’t matter. It was true for both of them. They shouldn’t have left each other alone, and it was so obvious now, with Sam’s blood seeping thickly through his hands. So fucking what if Dean had failed as a protector? That failure was nothing compared to this one. He had given his baby brother an orgasm, made his eyes roll and his body seize up, and he should have taken that for the miracle it was, instead of running scared.  
  
“Sam!”  
  
The call came from behind them, and the hairs on Dean’s arms slowly rose to attention. It was his own voice, calling Sam’s name from half a mile back.  
  
“It’s him,” Sam said. “He knows I’m gone.”  
  
The boat was in sight, and Dean picked up the pace, lifting Sam more than supporting him. He would have hauled him up and carried him if he didn’t think it would have split his stomach open like rotted fruit.  
  
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Dean muttered. Sam was gasping something about leaving him again, and Dean thought about clocking him one just to shut him up. He stumbled the last few feet to the boat, Sam’s knees all but dragging. He had to roll Sam over the edge. His own arms were burning with fatigue, and Sam couldn’t lift his legs high enough. He landed face up, thank god, because Dean only had seconds to turn around before the crocotta was on him, all nasty teeth and slashing claws.  
  
Dean caught it in the throat with a sharp jab, but the thing got its claws in him. They dug into the side of his neck, pressing him down into the mud, and his vision started to go white. Soul-suckers, Dean remembered. That’s what crocottas were. They liked torture, but they fed on souls.  
  
Through the pain in his throat, Dean tried to get two hands on the thing’s face, but its giant maw swam in front of him, opening to show jagged fangs like stalactites. Shit, he should’ve pushed the boat into the water before he turned, he should’ve put a gun in Sam’s hand, he should’ve said he was sorry like a grown up instead of talking about  _food_.  
  
He felt the sucking sensation, pulling breath from him. Dean clawed at its hands, but it held him down, feeding. Feeling leeched from his limbs, and the sky behind the thing’s head started to open, to spread, to swoop down and…  
  
The thing reared back, and the pressure on Dean’s windpipe let up with a swiftness that had him coughing. He lay flat on his back, trying to make his limbs move. His head was soggy and achy, and everything spun.  
  
The crocotta was on fire. Dean turned his head with effort, and Sam was propped back against the wheel of the boat, Dean’s flare gun in his hands. His mouth was moving, quick and anxious in his face, and it took Dean a second to make out the word.  _Knife_ , Sam was yelling.  _Use the knife_.  
  
And it was just in time, too. Dean got his fingers around the handle. The crocotta lunged back at him, flames and all, and Dean impaled it on the knife with one vicious thrust.

  
*****

Dean shoved them into the water as soon as he could get his legs to climb over the wall of the boat.  
  
“Sam, you good?” Dean asked, voice scraping out of his ruined throat.  
  
“I’m good,” he said.  
  
“I called the paramedics. They’ll meet us by the shore, so just…keep breathing all right?”  
  
Sam managed a tiny thumbs-up. Even a mile away, Dean could see the flames from the crocotta glowing against the dark.  
  
“You saved my ass,” Dean said, and Sam smiled faintly.  
  
“I have been hunting without you for three years.”  
  
“I know,” Dean said.  
  
He put three pain pills in Sam’s trembling hand, and Sam took them. His arm was just resting on his stomach, more than applying pressure, so Dean added his own weight. Sam winced, but didn’t protest.  
  
“Dean,” he said quietly. “Thanks.”  
  
Dean couldn’t look at him. “What are you thanking me for?” he asked bitterly. “This never would have happened if I hadn’t let you go off in the first place. You wouldn’t have fallen for that piece of shit voice mimicry because I would have been right next to you.”  
  
“Not your fault.” Sam’s voice was slow and labored. “Not just yours.”  
  
“We’re staying together when we get out of here,” Dean said, clearing his throat. “I know things are messed up but…”  
  
Dean hazarded a glance, and Sam was looking at him. That drunk look. That focal-point iron-anchor everything-else-hurts look.  
  
“Okay,” Sam said, and his lips curled.  
  
The pier came into sight, dotted with the red and blue flash that denoted emergency vehicles. He’d ride in the ambulance with Sam, Dean thought, and he wouldn’t even worry about leaving the Impala behind. He wasn’t letting Sam out of his sight for the next ten centuries or so.  
  
Dean put a hand on Sam’s face, felt the sharp just of his cheekbones. He’d spent so long backing away – it was weird to initiate the touch. Sam’s eyes were closed, and Dean patted his cheek.  
  
“Sam,” he said.  
  
Sam didn’t respond.  
  
“ _Sam_ ,” he said a little louder. Sam’s hand slipped off his stomach and hit the bench. Dean stared at it, limp and upturned, and felt the panic rising in him. He shook Sam’s shoulder.  
  
“Sammy!  _Sam_! Come on, dammit. Don’t do this to me now.” Dean’s heart was clawing its way up his throat. There was nothing. No tremor, no twitch. There was a pulse in his wrist, but Dean couldn’t tell if he was breathing, if his heart was starting to fail, if he was dying right there, all over again…  
  
In the distance behind them, Dean heard his name. Sam’s voice, screaming for him.  _Come to me_.  
  
The crocotta had followed them. They had burned it, shoved a knife through its heart, but Dean could see it all the same, cutting through the wake. It moved too fast, faster than their rental could take them. He saw the flash of a charred human head, the flip of legs, all in creepy stop-motion.  
  
He could have missed its heart. He’d missed before.  
  
It was howling his name, in Sam’s voice, and Dean wanted to skin it alive.  
  
Sam’s pulse knocked against the two fingers Dean had left on his neck. His other hand was still pressed down on Sam’s middle, holding his insides where they belonged. The thing behind them was gaining ground. If the crocotta caught them, it might overturn the boat. It might go for Sam first. It’d already overpowered Dean once, and Sam wasn’t conscious to help him this time.  
  
“Sammy,” Dean said, leaning down. He didn’t know if Sam was conscious to hear, but he figured proximity couldn’t hurt.  
  
“Sammy, I’m…I’m gonna point you to the shore, so you can get help. But there’s something I gotta do.”  
  
If the crocotta made it all the way to shore, there was no telling how many people might die, including Sam.  
  
“I should have said it before,” Dean said, pointing the boat straight into the dock. It might go a little too far, but there was a crowd around to minimize the damage.  
  
“I should have said it, and I didn’t, so I hope you can hear me now. I’m sorry I let things get so bad. This is all on me.”  
  
He set the boat at a nice sedate pace. Any faster and it might jolt Sam around too much when it bottomed out. It maybe had twenty yards to go. The monster behind them would be next to them in ten.  
  
Sam’s shoulders were really broad. Too broad for Dean to get his arms all the way around, but he tried anyway. He couldn’t stop touching Sam now, cradling his neck, pressing their foreheads together. They’d wasted so much fucking time. “You’re gonna be so pissed,” Dean said. “But better me than you.”  
  
He dove off the back of the boat, landing right in the crocotta’s path. He brought the knife up, but it was twisted out of his hand immediately. Wiry strength dragged him down, and in the murky water Dean could see where his first strike had gone wrong. Too far left. He dug his fingers into the wound anyway, eliciting a roar of pain. The knife was sinking, and he dove for it.  
  
Time. All he needed was time. He broke the surface, and in that instant, he could see. The boat knocking against land, Sam being pulled out by the paramedics, limp and waterlogged. An oxygen mask over his face, and they wouldn’t do that if Sam were dead. If he were a lost cause.  
  
Dean got his hand on the knife again, but the crocotta moved like lightening, even in the swamp. Dean grabbed on to it, one hand around its deceptively human arm. A stabilizing tug, and then a thrust, straight through its heart this time. Blood bloomed in the water, swirling in front of his eyes.  
  
Dean choked. Somehow it had gotten its claws through him, right through the soft part of his neck, tongue pinned to the back of his throat.  
  
Water rushed in, and the cold touched his lungs. The crocotta’s limbs relaxed in death, pulling them both gently down. Things were fading very quickly, but he could see blue and red lights dancing on the surface of the water. He thought of ambulances and fairies, hellfire and the ocean and Sam, and then his world went dark.


End file.
